Furnace Creek, CA
Furnace Creek, CA's wildfire risk, in USFS's own numbers
Furnace Creek's 171 buildings earn a 8th-percentile wildfire-risk score nationally under USFS's model — among the lower wildfire-risk places nationally. (Source: USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities methodology.)
USFS's separate burn-probability score — fire likelihood alone, before counting what's built there — puts Furnace Creek at the 14th percentile, close to its 8th-percentile risk score.
What "at risk" means for the buildings here
Most of Furnace Creek's buildings (53.8%) sit in the Indirect zone, where wind-blown embers rather than flame front are the mechanism USFS is scoring — ember-resistant vents and non-combustible roofing are the interventions this pattern favors, more than defensible space alone.
Where Furnace Creek ranks
There's little gap between Furnace Creek's 8th national percentile and its 0th percentile inside California, which means the state comparison mostly confirms what the national score already shows. Among the 31,521 US communities USFS scores, Furnace Creek ranks 29,016 for wildfire risk (1 is highest) and 25,973 by building count (1 is largest). Within California alone, it ranks 1,566 of 1,570 places by risk. See the full county-by-county picture for California on its state page.
Shopping for coverage in Furnace Creek
Because Furnace Creek is in California, a wildfire-hazard disclosure is legally required before a sale closes here — unusual nationally, since only these two states mandate it. The state's FAIR Plan alone carried 668,609 policies by the end of 2025. Full detail in the disclosure-law guide.
Lowering exposure, not just insuring around it
Because 53.8% of Furnace Creek's buildings sit in the Indirect zone, sealing the ember pathway (vents, roofing, gutters) is the intervention this page's data actually supports — see the home-hardening guide.
Where Furnace Creek's figures come from
Every one of the two percentiles behind Furnace Creek's 29,016-place national rank traces to USFS's Wildfire Risk to Communities dataset — see the methodology guide. The exposure-zones guide covers what Furnace Creek's dominant indirect exposure actually means, with real examples from across the dataset.